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Audius: A decentralized streaming media protocol officially recommended by the AppStore | Project Introduction

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AUDIO token has been listed on Binance.

The existing business model of the music industry is not friendly to creators. The current dominant business model of the entire industry is almost all driven by record companies and music platforms/apps, and many creators cannot get the maximum benefit. The data shows that music artists can only get about 12% of the total income of their works, and for new artists or niche musicians, without sufficient support, it is impossible to continue to create.

In this context, Audius is trying to change the status quo. It is a decentralized music sharing and streaming protocol that aims to facilitate direct transactions between listeners and creators. Middlemen, like Spotify/Apple Music or streaming service providers like record labels, everyone is free to distribute, commercialize and stream any audio content. Not only does Audius hope that "the middlemen will no longer make the difference", but the responsibility of the platform operator is clearly limited to music discovery/hosting and aligning incentives according to creators and listeners.

From the perspective of development progress, in early 2019, the team launched the alpha version of Audius, and launched the Audius testnet in August 2019. A decentralized public Beta version was launched in September, and iOS and Android mobile apps were released in January and February this year. In October, the mainnet was launched.

On October 24 this year, Binance launched Audius (AUDIO), and as early as February this year, Audius Music It has also been officially recommended by the Apple App Store.

According to the official statement, since its launch in September 2019, Audius currently has 750,000 monthly active users (MAU), with more than one million audio plays per month. The platform has brought together deadmau5, 3LAU, and RAC in many well-known creators. At present, the main network of the project has been launched.

The Audius protocol consists of 3 parts:

Content node: composed of A network of nodes operated by users to host content and control access permissions on behalf of artists;

Content Ledger: A single source of trusted data for all data accessible within the Audius protocol, which will References are anchored;

Discovery Nodes: A network of user-operated nodes that index the Audius content ledger and provide an easy-to-query interface for retrieving metadata.

As the native token of the Audius network, the AUDIO smart contract address: 0x18aaa7115705e8be94bffebde57af9bfc265b998, in the design, AUDIO is mainly used for the following purposes:

1. By staking tokens , running discovery nodes or content nodes, users can get higher fan discovery possibilities and a part of network fees;

2. By locking tokens, unlock more Multiple exclusive features and services, such as artist tokens and badges, etc., and access to voting rights for fans who want to share their success;

3. Participate in protocol governance voting for future iterations of the protocol make a contribution.

Airdrop application method

Recently, in order to reward active contributors to the platform, the official airdrop campaign was launched. The airdrop is measured by the user's total traffic, followers, song collection, forwarding volume, and playlist collection volume. It is expected that there will be 10,000 users Top artists and fans receive airdrops of AUDIO tokens, which users can currently claim on the dashboard and use on the Audius platform.

These airdrops will total 50 million tokens, or 5% of the initial supply. Every Audius user can now visit the Dashboard on the official website, and then find the "Claim $AUDIO" button, even if there is no ETH, they can claim AUDIO.

A total of 50 million airdropped tokens will be distributed to about 10,000 accounts, with top accounts like Brownies & Lemonade, Phuture Collective and Good Society receiving about 60,000 tokens each , the distribution is calculated as follows:

of course , in order to make the distribution more democratic, the weight of each part in the above formula has an upper limit. Click to view detailed distribution rules

The reason for capping each parameter is that the team hopes to create a superuser-friendly Releases, either in the form of song uploads on the artist side or in the form of active fan engagement such as song saving, playlist saving and reposting, etc.

Token economic model

According to the official The design of AUDIO Genesis issued 1 billion pieces, the specific allocation is as follows:

1. Community airdrop: 55 million pieces (accounting for 5.5%)

used to reward past use Users of the Audius Agreement and Participants of Special Events.

2. Fund funds: 178 million pieces (accounting for 17.8%)

Open Audio The Foundation is a newly formed entity with the primary purpose of managing the long-term development of Audius, formulating token distribution and incentive/growth plans.

When the main network is launched, the 65 million AUDIO provided by the foundation for the incentive plan will be released for circulation, and the remaining Funds will be unlocked for 5 years beginning October 23, 2021.

3. Team and consultants: 496 million pieces (accounting for 40.6%)

Reserved for Audius founders, employees and strategic artists/consultants. This part of tokens has a 3-year unlocking period, which is divided into quarterly unlocking, and will be released every 6 months starting from April 23. This part includes about 80 core artists such as deadmau5, 3LAU and RAC.

4. Investment institutions: 360 million pieces (accounting for 36%)

Allocated to institutional investors participating in Audius financing, this part of tokens will be unlocked for two years, once every quarter, and will be released for 6 months on April 23. This distribution means that no team, advisor or investor tokens will be in circulation for 6 months after launch. In the initial stage, the market circulation is 120 million pieces.

In addition to the initial issuance, the annual increase of Audius is 7%. The official believes that the purpose of the token issuance is to A steady stream of tokens goes to the most valuable community members, consistently rewarding the most active users, rather than simply letting some early adopters stake their tokens.

Audius believes that those who are currently most active on the platform may not be in the next 5 or 10 years The role of driving the development of the platform means that AUDIO needs to be allocated in such a dynamic way that new users always get a voice. At the same time, AUDIO holders are encouraged to participate in governance and submit proposals (https://dashboard.audius .org/governance), providing new advice.

Staking Migration of Audius

By design, music service providers can stake Audius tokens in order to operate the protocol and recommend music content to listeners and facilitate music discovery by indexing the Audius blockchain.

Considering that it takes about one week for most node service providers to switch from the testnet to the mainnet, Audius The first nodes will be running initially, but the Audius founders and foundation will not be staking to ensure all rewards go to service providers. Currently, node operators such as Figment, Staked.us, and Stake Capital will also go online one after another.

Investment institutions

According to Rhythm Blockbeats query , Audius raised USD 5.5 million in August 2018, and completed a strategic round of financing of USD 3.1 million in July this year, led by Multicoin Capital and Blockchange Ventures. In October this year, Audius completed a USD 1.25 million expansion round of financing led by Binance Labs.

In addition, participating institutional/individual investors include Kyle Samani, Ken Seif, Paul Veradittakit, Steve Mckeon, There's also Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Collab+Currency, General Catalyst, Lightspeed, and Kleiner Perkins, as well as Standard Crypto, Hack VC, and Free Co, among others.

Team members

Audius co-founders (from left): Product Manager Forrest Browning, CEO Ranidu Lankage, CTO Roneil Rumburg

Among them, Ranidu Lankage, a Yale Economics graduate, is a Sri Lankan pop singer, producer and DJ who signed his contract with Sony at the age of 19. First record contract and first Sri Lankan musician to appear on international media such as MTV, BBC Radio 1 and VH1. He's also co-founder and CEO of the Drop, an electronic music discovery service he co-founded with college friend Justin Kan (partner at Y Combinator and founder of Twitch.tv). Before founding the Drop, he held executive positions at Lehman Brothers and Google.

CTO Roneil Rumburg graduated from Stanford University and was a former Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins ) partner, responsible for the company's internal investment in blockchain and AI companies, and he is also the co-founder of the Bitcoin payment company Backslash.